“I wanted to kill Chopin”
This shocking confession came from the mouth of Zbigniew Zamachowski, chairman of the On Air Jury, during a meeting with the audience. Similarly strong statements about social problems in India were heard during the meeting that followed the screening of Sagdati (Smita Patil’s retrospective). Tuesday was marked by meetings with filmmakers from Denmark, Germany, Syria, India and Poland.
“It gets to become a man first, before one can call themselves actors”, said Zamachowski, two-time winner of the Golden Lions in Gdynia for Reverted and Same the Uhlans... by Sylwester Checinski. Zbigniew Zamachowski is famous for his roles in such films as Kill Me, Cop, Three Colours: White, The Decalogue: X, Escape from the “Liberty” Cinema, Pulkownik Kwiatkowski and Happy New York. He is also a great theatre actor and master of stage songs, and he has been selected as the chairman of this year’s On Air Competition Jury.
The jury’s chairman reflected on his former mentors, i.e. theatre magician Jerzy Grzegorzewski and cinema magician Krzysztof Kieslowski. The audience will surely remember an anecdote about the PIN code that Zamachowski enters in the ATM in Three Colours: White. Kieslowski has specified a certain combination of numbers in the screenplay for the film. When shooting the scene, Zamachowski entered a different combination and Kieslowski took him to the side and ordered him to enter the code from the screenplay. When asked about the combination in the text, Kieslowski explained that it was the combination for his own private card. Zamachowski made it absolutely clear that only a true giant, just like Kieslowski himself, was able to mock the world and show his private PIN code on the screen – the thing that modern people value more than their dignity. When telling his anecdote, Zamachowski confessed that he was so exhausted working on multi-compound sentences with hundreds of words in each of them that he desired to “kill Chopin, although he had been long dead”, during his work on the reading version of all letters written by the composer.
The guest told many stories about his film pairs, many of which ended up as long-time friendships. They included Boguslaw Linda, Janusz Gajos, Jerzy Stuhr and Kazimierz Kutz. Zamachowski also made many quotes from Sherk. The actor has given his voice for the famous green ogre.
The filmmakers participating in the SHORTCUT competition have also met with the audience of the festival. Syrian Bassam Checkhes gave some details about Waiting for a P.O. Box, the first Syrian film selected for Cannes. “The film speaks a universal language and I have succumbed to it. It corresponds with the reality, although I try to be extremely analytical about the filmmaking process.” The outstanding film by Chekhes presents the whirl of thoughts and ideas that come into a filmmaker’s head, before they are able to complete their work.
German director Marcus Schwenzel and screenwriter David Charles Fridbertsson presented their Seven Years of Winter, which tells a story about the ”death zone” in Chernobyl (Ukraine) and using children to excavate treasures from radioactive soil. “The Western mass media have never mentioned it and we intended to remind people about that tragedy and the fact that homeless (bezprizonre) children in Ukraine are still involved in those practices.”
Jedrzej Baczyk, the author of The Coyote (also part of the competition) declared that “the film is his farewell to youth, to being a punk rock fan and to his first throes of love. It is the end of a certain stage in my life”, he said. The film by this Torun-born director is a story about a teenager, who becomes a punk rock musician to win the heart of his first girlfriend, but the endeavour soon becomes to hard to handle.
Some more strong statements have also been made during the meeting with Manya Patil, director of the Smita Patil Foundation and Mohan Agashe, director of FIIT and film partner of Smita Patil, which followed after the screening of Sagdati. The screenplay for the film was based on a short story by a famous Indian writer, Munshi Premchanda, and it tells a story about the caste system in India. During the meeting, the audience learned that since the caste system is so deeply rooted in people’s minds, they are completely entrapped in it and cannot realise that they are unfair towards other members of the society.
There was also a long discussion about the films of the competition. When speaking live for Polish Radio Four, Piotr Kletowski, one of the jurors of the On Air Competition emphasized that the films selected for this year’s festival were great: “I believe that the key to this selection is fresh and avant-garde films. The films presented during Tofifest demonstrate the newest cinema trends, but also phenomena unknown to Poland and this region of Europe”, he said.
The programme for Wednesday is dominated by La Grande Bouffe of Tofifest or the Kitchen Perspective on Cinema. The lecture about the connections between cinema and cooking shall be given by professor Jaroslaw Dumanowski of Nicolaus Copernicus University in Torun and author of the Encyclopaedia of Old Polish Cuisine. Additionally, there will also be tasting of the original dishes of Old Polish and regional cuisines.
The ON AIR Competition will be represented by two films, i.e. the shocking In the Fog by Sergei Loznitsa (from Belarus) and British Unconditional directed by Bryn Higgins. In the Fog is a story about a guerrilla fighter and a villager, who get involved in the events of WWII, somewhere in the back of beyond in Belarus. Deep in a primordial forest, where there are no friends or foes and the borderline between treason and heroism no longer exists, the protagonist is made to make a moral choice in immoral circumstances. As for Unconditional, it is a story of the emotional love triangle between Kristen and Owen, twins living the life of outsiders, and a fascinating and secretive Liam.
It is also worth paying attention to Captive by Brillante Mendoza, which is shown as part of the FORWARD: THE PHILIPPINES section. It is a drama about a group of European tourists, who have been taken captive by anti-government Philippine guerrilla fighters. The abduction turns into many long weeks of wandering through a jungle. The leading character is played by Isabelle Huppert, who won a prize during Tofifest 2009.
Today, the audience will also have an opportunity to meet Maria Sadowska, after the screening of Women’s Day (in the FROM POLAND section). Another interesting thing will be the screening of Motór by Wieslaw Paluch, i.e. the film that won the first edition of Tofifest, back in 2003. The enthusiasts of great experimentalists of cinema will surely appreciate the SzaZaZe plays Themerson concert. The event will present live music to the films made by the greatest “Polish Mellies and Lumiere altogether”, i.e. Stanislaw and Franciszka Themersons.
The day ends with the concert of Jesień and We Are Not From Iceland (free admission) in Dwa Światy Club and a night festival party under the name “India Pindia or India at Tofifest” at Kawalerka Club (free admission).
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